Gleams Which Pass
by Cordeliers Club
Summary: Old. Prouvaire: drunk. Grantaire: amused. Prouvaire talks a lot, is a little embarrassing, but plants in Grantaire's mind an idea which will, no doubt, influence a certain heroic act for which we know him well. WARNINGS: Stupidity, Drunk!Ami!Fic.


**Before You Go On:** Old piece, foolish drunkenness, of COURSE involving Grantaire, and Prouvaire being Romantic and didactic and wasted--do what you will with it, I wash my hands of this nonsense. Continues my trend of There is No Fourth Wall.

**Gleams Which Pass**

At a wine shop on the _rue de l'Ancienne Comédie_, Grantaire was surprised to find Jean Prouvaire, bored and melancholic, staring out the window. Grantaire had meant to meet one of his school fellows (whose nose he had broken boxing) but of course was distracted from this errand by Prouvaire's unexpected presence.

And _very_ unexpected drunkenness.

"Apparently you have a life outside the Musain," said Grantaire, privately thinking, _a life outside yipping averment at Enjolras' heels_, "and it involves drinking."

He sat down across from Prouvaire.

"Grantaire," said the other, sounding less bleary than he looked.

"Jean Prouvaire," said Grantaire jovially.

"Jehan."

"You and I both know that is silly."

"What are you doing here?"

"Law of odds: I am an inebriate; it is apophthegmatic that I am always in some wine shop or other, and the _arrondissement_ is only so large. Far more interesting: what are you doing here?"

"Apophthegmatic?" said Prouvaire, vaguely. He had the usual oblivious air; he had no cravat, he was inexplicably wearing a coat. He looked even less certain than usual than he was speaking to anyone real, "I come here—occasionally. The Café Procope is across the street, but I daren't go in."

Grantaire grinned. "Oh, you_ daren't_,"

"No—But I keep an eye on it from here."

Grantaire was not especially fond of Prouvaire; not over-fond as the rest of them were. He did not like many of the things Prouvaire said—the non sequiturs in so many languages, which Enjolras seemed to understand and always appreciate. There was also something of a secret code; the assumption that Rousseau and Aeschylus were always on the other's mind and required only the tiniest evocation. He especially did not like that even, dreamy as he was, Prouvaire could be vicious. Much like Grantaire but with irony, never sarcasm, and always with the most innocent expression. However, these things were now immaterial, since Prouvaire was drunk and that was _hilarious._

"So what is going on at the Café Procope tonight?"

Prouvaire shrugged, sloppily. Grantaire recognized that from his own repertoire. "'Hell is a city very much like London', if we may take the word of an expert—and so Paris is a city very much like heaven. What is going on at the Café Procope is _ineffable_."

Grantaire blinked. This was the Prouvaire he knew: Shelley this and Chatterton that and something else that, put together, made no sense. "You," said Grantaire, "are not changed much drunk, you just love poetry more vocally."

"Poetry," said Prouvaire with a drunken lilt, "is entirely lovable because it is a chrysalid, the potential of beauty. But the reality, in the sun or the forest, it reaches an apex and declines. Poetry is—the first strain of a crescendo."

Jean Prouvaire luxuriated in words the way women did in pearls. You could tell he wanted to put his teeth or his tongue on them in private.

Grantaire nodded.

"I do not know whether you stroll in gardens, Grantaire. But the lesson of that exercise is that _nothing_ is more disappointing than a paradise, and so, nothing as disappointing as Paris. These things are beautiful in _moments_ only. One parses beauty to its purest; something that requires no preparation and has no consequence, and is only Ia moment in time/I. This is the only way it can be meant that beauty is truth and truth beauty, that they are both apexes. Both so _quickly over_," Grantaire might have looked bored, and Prouvaire saw, and raised his voice: "I challenge you to stare out a window one morning, at anything you like; the sun over the trees or the Seine or something, and just in the second that you think you have seen something beautiful, something has _changed_, and you don't know what, if it's the light or your mind, and so before you can remember the moment has gone. The memory is impervious to beauty as it is impervious to truth."

Grantaire had been nodding along with this speech, because it is so _amusing_ to see Prouvaire, his head barely supported by his neck and his hands limp, trying to talk to _him_ about beauty. "So what," said Grantaire, fighting a smile, "it's all shit, you're going to throw yourself in the Seine because of all the overwhelming woe?"

"Death is a moment with no consequence," mused Prouvaire, macabrely, and then: "the way to understand it is this: glints of sun on a dewdrop, and they are exquisite but passing, too soon to glory in, and the drop of dew remains. Only less."

Grantaire then, feels inexpressibly sad (a sadness that is muted in a second, interestingly). He walks Prouvaire home anyway, just to make sure the boy doesn't _actually_ throw himself in la Seine. What he finds himself contemplating is not the passing gleam on dewdrops, but the inconsequence, and unmeasured quickness, of death.

ONLY ONE NOTE:

Percy Shelley said, "Hell is a city very much like London" once. I'm sorry to say I don't know more.

Also whoa, Victor Hugo is all up in Grantaire's head with chapter titles!


End file.
